Last year it was announced that Jan Singer has resigned as CEO of Victoria’s Secret. Swirling rumours of a company in economic decline, soon confirmed by L Brand’s mid quarterly report, which announced that VS’s dividend will be slashed by 50%, surrounded this resignation. John Mehas was revealed as the brand’s new CEO.

Reading this, I was saddened that this resignation will result in the loss of a female CEO in a big company. However, in the two short years that Singer has had reign of the brand, there is no evidence that she has any great understanding of her female customers. Despite this, Singer deserves recognition for her efforts to diversify the catwalk. There is still a lot of work to be done on this, particularly on their social media platforms e.g. Instagram, which sees press images of models of colour largely out-weighed by fair skinned, blonde haired women. Coming into his role, Mehas has a lot of eyes on him, hoping to see vast change in the company’s archaic ideals.

Though VS’s  picture ‘perfect’ brand may have had a place in the recent past, the release of Rihanna’s Savage Fenty lingerie brand deconstructed the myth that VS have so consistently tried to profit from: that there is only one type of beautiful. VS’s marketing team seem obsessed with deceiving their customers, telling them that if they fork out a large sum of money for a tulle-fringed glitter-glazed bra, they will magically transform into one of their prototype 6ft­, big boobed, small waisted models, not realising that their client-base for the most part have only needed a mirror to see-through this contrived ideal.

Don’t get me wrong, believe it or not, I actually love VS products. I have been a loyal fan for years and have found the quality of their products to be extremely good. However, in a day and age where a leading pop star’s lingerie brand offers bra sizes in a range of 32A-44E; promotes their items with models of all shapes and sizes, crucially avoiding the term ‘plus-size’ and hires pregnant model Slick Woods for their high fashion cat-walk, VS seem to have lost touch with their customers. The most basic business principle, that the larger the customer base, the larger the profits, seems to be lost on the company.

It is not the lingerie’s style aesthetic or materials that makes VS an enemy to the modern-day woman, but the brand’s refusal to accept that we don’t all come in perfect barbie form. VS models are absolutely beautiful and I have an enormous amount of respect for the hard work that they put into their jobs, but the very brand they represent is continuing to undermine their work by vindictively using them to affirm their ideals, their rigid vision which applauds these women as the only definition of beauty.

I hope that Mehas addresses all of these branding issues – which ultimately bubble down to a lack of diversity in all different aspects – with a great sense of urgency.